


The Things They've Left Behind

by bccalling



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s05e16 Dark Side of the Moon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:12:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bccalling/pseuds/bccalling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, things get left behind.<br/>Sometimes, they throw them away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Things They've Left Behind

* * *

Memories lost in corners of roadside motel rooms. Sometimes they're important, others small, maybe insignificant, even, or difficult to forget. They don't remember them all. Sometimes they never actually realize they're gone. They don't have much, really, but sometimes a shirt is just a shirt or a lighter a lighter.

Sometimes it's the things they forget that build them, that break them, leave them blossoming and withering away to nothing.

Sometimes it's the things they leave behind that shape them.

* * *

When Sammy is two, Dean gives him his very first stuffed animal. It's a little bear with soft, fluffy fur that Sammy instantly loves to snuggle. The day Dean brings it home for him, Sammy's little hands reach out gently as he murmurs his brother's name, again and again and again, awe in his little voice. When his eyes lift from the little brown bear, he's beaming, light shining bright through those shaggy bangs, and he throws himself into Dean's arms to squeeze his brother tight.

Sammy sleeps in a big-boy bed with Dean, because he can't sleep without his big brother wrapped around him and Dean can't sleep without at least a protective hand on his baby brother, so they just sleep snuggled together on a too-big double bed wherever they happen to land. The teddy instantly takes up residence between them in their nightly huddle.

The little bear makes it with them for four years, constantly clutched to Sammy's side.

In late winter, when Sammy's six, though, Teddy falls between the bed and the nightstand at one of the roadside motels they frequent. Sammy doesn't realize until they're half an hour away in the middle of a nasty snow storm. Dean begs John to go back for it, but the weather and the time lost conspire against him, and John refuses his pleas.

Dean spends hours consoling a sobbing Sam in the backseat of the Impala.  
Without Teddy, Sammy only turns to Dean for comfort. 

* * *

They lose a ridiculous number of trivial little things between then and the night Sam leaves for Stanford. Nothing that means much, though, really. After Teddy, Sam had taken to leaving everything important right there in the Impala. Dean notices it right away but waits a full two years before asking Sam about it. Instead, he spends time observing the way Sam tucks away his possessions in a little duffle under the front seat. It never leaves that spot when Sammy’s not in the car (and it won’t until he walks out for Stanford years later), though the things he keeps in it shift over time.

When Sammy’s eight, Dean asks about it. Pretends to be casual, but he’s actually a little concerned because dad always has the Impala and they spend so much time in these motels while dad’s away. Sammy should have the things he loves there with him for comfort, Dean thinks.

“Sammy?” he asks gently one night while he’s sitting on the edge of his brother’s bed, “Sammy, why don’t you ever bring your things with you when we stay in these places? You always leave everything in the car. Why? Wouldn’t it help you to have them here?”

Sam smiles a little up into his big brother’s concerned eyes, and Dean takes comfort in that. “They’re safe there, Dean,” he confesses. “Dad will always come back, and the Impala will always be with him. I don’t need that stuff here, anyway.”

“But don’t you get bored, Sammy? It would help with that,” Dean insists, as he watches his little brother quizzically.

“No.”

When Sam says it, it’s so matter-of-fact. Like he expects Dean to just get it. Dean’s confused, but he lets it go.

* * *

The night Sam leaves for Stanford, Sam’s so angry he can’t think straight. Dean’s quiet, hurt, a little heartbroken maybe, and he follows his brother outside just a little too late to catch him. Dean wants to tell Sam it’s okay, that Dean’s proud of him, that they’ll be all right, to study hard and put the whole damn school to shame. But Sam’s long gone by the time Dean works up the courage.

What he finds in Sam’s wake is a notepad full of letters Dean knows he was never meant to see. There are lengthy explanations, apologies, justifications. And Sam’s crossed out every single one with increasingly violent swipes of his pen. By the last one, the paper’s weak and torn.

Dean nearly breaks down at the words on that final page.

_Come with me._

* * *

When Sam loses Jess, Dean wonders for a long time whether his little brother will ever really be okay again. He hates seeing the pain on Sam’s face, and the guilt his little brother harbors threatens to destroy him every day.

Sammy had loved Jess. Really and truly loved her, and it scares Dean how bent on revenge Sam is, after. Dean’s happy to have Sammy there with him, hunting again, but he can’t help but wonder sometimes if maybe Sam would have been better off in that safe, normal life he was trying to carve out for himself.

It’s been nearly a year when Dean walks in on Sam tearing apart every duffle they own, searching desperately for something. When Dean places a gentle, calming hand on his brother’s shoulder, Sam nearly jumps out of his skin, and when he turns to look at Dean, his eyes are rimmed with tears and he sounds like he’s hyperventilating.

“ _Where is it?_ ” Sam asks in a rushed, soft voice, his words slurring together and his hands shaking hard.

Dean stares back at him, eyes wide with concern. “Where’s what, Sammy?” Dean asks gently, taking Sam’s shaking hands in his own as he tries to calm the younger man. “What are you looking for? What do you need?”

“ _The ring_.”

Sam breathes it in a rush, and it takes a moment for the words to register in Dean’s head. “Sammy, kiddo, what ring?” One of Dean’s hands moves up to Sam’s forehead, pushing his brother’s hair out of his eyes as he tries to pretend he’s not secretly checking his little brother for a fever. “You gotta tell me what you’re looking for, so I can help you.”

“The _ring_ ,” Sam insists, his eyes desperate and broken, “the ring I bought for Jess, Dean. I can’t find it. It’s gone, and it was all I had left.” Dean takes in a sharp breath as he watches Sammy’s shoulders slump as his little brother gives up and lets a couple of tears slip from the corners of his eyes. “ _It was all I had left_ ,” he whispers, his pain almost tangible in the little room.

It’s only moments before Dean catches Sam up in his arms and holds him close as Sam collapses in on himself; Sam’s larger frame shrinking down to fit into his big brother’s arms as Dean cradles Sammy’s cheek in the crook of his neck, letting his little brother cry out all of the pain he’s still holding on to as Sam grieves the loss of the woman he’d once planned to marry.

* * *

Dad’s leather jacket turns up missing sometime while Sam’s soulless. Dean’s not sure when, exactly, but he realizes it’s missing too late in the game to even hope to find it again. Sam doesn’t care, Dean’s sure, because Sam doesn’t care about anything these days.

Dean thinks that’s probably what hurts the most, really. It’s a rough blow for Dean; loosing that little piece of dad while he’s missing all of his little brother.

Dean never even tells Sam. Figures his actual little brother wouldn’t care to begin with, so what chance is there that this soulless version might?

A week later, Dean’s shocked when he picks up Sam’s cell phone to the message that some little motel they’d stayed in two weeks ago couldn’t find any information on the leather jacket he’d left behind. When a stunned Dean checks, out of curiosity, he finds the numbers to every motel they’ve stayed in over the past several weeks packed away in his brother’s recent calls.

* * *

Sometimes, things get left behind.  
Sometimes, they throw them away.

* * *

Years later, when Sam's gone and Dean's alone, wandering the country aimlessly--not hunting, not staying, just moving. Constantly moving. Running from the memories. Trying to leave them all behind him--Dean finds himself in a random motel room. He doesn't recognize it, but something triggers him. Leaves him sobbing and broken with a room full of shattered glass lying around him.

Because there are two beds. He always asks for one now, trying to leave behind the memory of his little brother at his side, and he just can't take it. Wakes in the middle of the night, gasping and screaming for air. Because in his dreams, Sam's lying lifeless beside him, blood blooming from the center of his chest. Looks peaceful. Like he's sleeping.

And when Dean wakes, it's to that cold, empty bed beside him, and the memory of his little brother, dead and gone. For good, this time.

So he smashes everything he can get his hands on. Screams at the top of his lungs as he falls to his knees. Shards of broken glass bite through his worn jeans and bright red blooms in their wake. He doesn't feel pain, though. Can't feel anything, really. Because Sam was his heart, and without his little brother, Dean Winchester feels nothing but numb.

The room is dark. There's cold seeping in through the shattered window. Wisps of foggy air dance in the little bit of moonlight that shines through. Dean can feel the freezing rain on his skin.

He cries. Silent. Wracked with guilt and shame and hurt. Until the world around him goes quiet and dark.

* * *

He wakes in the earliest hours of dawn. Tendrils of sunlight barely reaching up through the dark of night.

He sees a gleam in the corner. Shoved up under the bed, caught in the dent between the carpet and the wall.

He doesn't know what possesses him, but he reaches for it. Crawls his way half up under the bed and stretches almost to the point of pain to reach the gleaming object. His fingers close around it, and he meets a slight resistance, but when he tugs gently, it snaps free in his hand.

He pulls back, takes a moment to rest against the bed and regain his breath from the stretch.

When he looks down, it all suddenly becomes clear. Flood of memory rushing back. This room. Heaven. An utter loss of trust and hope. The distinctive clink it had made falling into that wastebasket the first time around.

He doesn't know how it's still here. After years of guests and housekeeping and people shuffling in and out over and over again.

But it's here.  
And it hurts.

Because Sam's gone, and Dean has nothing, nothing at all left to live for. No purpose or fight left in him without his brother by his side. Because Dean's always only been half without Sam. And there's nothing else that can ever make him whole.

He remembers Sam's words that day, so many years ago. Before the cage, before purgatory, before the Darkness. Before it all.

"Not today, Sammy," he whispers, a quake in his voice as tears flood his eyes, though none fall, as his fingers close around cold metal. "Not anymore."

* * *

Dean Winchester never walks out of that motel room. He doesn't have the strength to be half anymore.

And all those things they've left behind? They've never really mattered anyway. Just snapshot memories lost even to those who meant the most, those who believed they could never lose. Who believed they'd never die.

_You and me. We'll find it_.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry. I'm a horrible person.


End file.
